US intel: Chinese spy balloon part of wider surveillance program

According to senior U.S. officials who spoke with The Washington Post, the Chinese spy balloon shot down over the weekend was part of a vast surveillance program ran by the People’s Republic of China (PRC). Those officials say the program has been going for several years, partly out of the Hainan province off China’s south coast.

China has used the surveillance program to collect information on military assets in nearby countries like Japan, India, Vietnam, Taiwan and the Philippines. Spy balloons have also been spotted over five different continents.

The Post report contradicts China’s claim that the spy balloon was actually a weather balloon that was blown off course. The U.S. has widely rejected that claim.

“When it comes to what we’ve heard from the PRC, I’m just not going to give that too much oxygen,” State Department spokesperson Ned Price said earlier this week. “Let me see if I can state it as clearly as I can. The PRC knows precisely what this was. The PRC knows precisely why this was in our airspace. The PRC knows precisely what this was doing over the United States, and ultimately the PRC knows precisely why we did what we did.”

The surveillance program report comes as a team of FBI engineers at a government lab in Quantico, Virginia, have begun poring over the remnants of the recovered spy balloon. The U.S. has also begun sharing information with diplomats around the world.

Monday, Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman briefed nearly 150 foreign diplomats across 40 embassies. The U.S. embassy in Beijing also gathered foreign diplomats on Monday and Tuesday to present U.S. findings about the balloon.

The diplomats at the Beijing briefing said they were told the solar panels on the balloon meant it needed more power than a weather balloon, and its flight path did not conform with natural wind patterns. U.S. officials have said the balloon was equipped with rudders and propellers.

“Based on the U.S. briefing, our own understanding about such balloons and the fact that China has so far refused to name the company or entity that owns this balloon, we find it hard to believe it is a civilian weather balloon,” a Beijing-based Asian defense diplomat told Reuters.

CNN contributed to this report.